Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Banishment

Later the younger boy would say one morning, dark still, less than eight hours of sleep between the three of them, that’s the last time, Mom, we’re not going through this again, we’re leaving, we have to leave this time, and she asked, are you sure?

They took that ridiculous route to the 5, thinking he could be following, that he had read their minds like he’d done before. Beginning in Boise, that last place they’d landed, then down to Burns, first, then back and up and down and over to Eugene; she nearly forty and this boy, Lance, fifteen, motels by the university, Springfield, out by the mall, nothing felt safe, and then for the next two days driving the I5-South, almost all the way to the end.

Camp Pendleton, everything’s brown except the ocean and the sky, the sun hurts their eyes, sleeping on the floor and the couch, she knows this can’t last long, the younger boy looking sadder and more scared each hour that passes, she thinks her head will split wide open. But they’re elated to see the older boy, her son, his brother, they’ve missed him so much. Pendleton, their refuge; daily she’s ashamed of what she said to the recruiter when he’d first called.

Once he said, you know Mom, I think I’m luckier than Lance is because I never expected any love from my dad so when I didn’t get it, it didn’t hurt me.

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